To each his own: how to provide a library user with an article respecting licence agreements

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to describe the state of the art of the Italian Archivio Licenze Periodici Elettronici (ALPE) project which aims to improve the understanding of the issues raised by licence agreements of electronic resources in the Inter-Library Loan Service and to support librarians in the implementation of the right policies. Design/methodology/approach – ALPE – (E-Journals Licenses Archive) is a national archive of interlibrary loan (ILL) clauses, extracted from standard and negotiated licences, to manage, to publicly share and to check the permitted uses of e-resources for ILL and document delivery. Findings – The ALPE archive facilitates public and free access to a remarkable amount of information and data about ILL conditions granted by the most important commercial and academic publishers, and responds to the practical problems of managing and understanding ILL clauses in e-licences. Originality/value – The solutions adopted by ALPE effectively solve many of the problems reported in the literature. These should help ILL librarians in dealing with the problems associated with ILL and licensing.